Mark Chadbourn has something to smile about -- a new
novella from PS Publishing and a new novel set in the world
left after The Age of Misrule.

Mark
Chadbourn, recently featured in an Agony
Column article about new dark fantasy talks in this interview
about his roots as a writer, his influences in the real world, his
research, his non-fiction and his future projects. I'd definitely
recommend that you check out his web site, The
Alien Online. It's filled with some great reviews, interviews,
and links. But first and foremost, look for his fiction, in
particular his latest, The Age of Misrule trilogy. I'll turn this
over to Mark -- thanks Mark! --Rick Kleffel

TAC: Mark, could you discuss your start as a writer -- what
made you fill up the blank pages in the beginning, and how you came
to choose horror as your genre?

MC: Writers are born, I think. That desire to tell stories
manifested very early - I was putting things together when I was
eight, nine or ten, most of it SF or horror-related as I've been
heavily interested in genre stuff for as long as I can remember. I
was reading comics from when I was four, DC and ACG stuff to start
with, then Marvel, and I was hooked on TV shows like Voyage To The
Bottom of the Sea and Time Tunnel, so most of the things I wrote at
the time reflected that. As to horror, again it came through comics -
Berni Wrightson's work in House of Mystery and the like...and
a dog-eared
Lovecraft anthology I picked up from a market stall when
I was around 14, which just knocked me out. By then I was deeply
into old horror movies, the Universal stuff, Hammer, but mostly a
great Jacques Tourneur movie called Night of the Demon (Curse of
the... in the US) based on an MR James story. Still the scariest
thing I've ever seen. But it was actually reading Salem's Lot when I
was 21 that I decided I wanted to write in the horror genre. At the
time, King's approach was visionary - he really showed what could be
achieved in that genre if you broke with convention. Now, of course,
he's the new convention (which isn't a criticism of his work, just a
statement of fact).

Early fodder for the budding horror author. Scarier
still is that they want to remake it!

The Hand of M.
R. James reaches forth through time to grab
another victim.

From recreational reading to recommendation for future
employment -- King has helped to start a number of careers
by inspiring the young writer.

TAC: Can you discuss your non-fiction work, Testimony, and
the influence of research on your writing? In particular, I noticed a
number of references to the Fortean Times in 'World's End'. Dare I
ask -- do you believe? Where do you look for information on Fortean
matters?

MC: Testimony is a study of a couple trapped by
circumstance in a supposedly haunted house and the awful things that
happened to them over a five year period. I came across a tangential
mention of the story in a newspaper article and decided to ring the
family for a chat. It turned out it really was a cracking story
because of the human element, as much as the supernatural side, and I
knew I had to relate it in a book. It wasn't a commercial exercise (I
never think in that way) - I simply wanted to investigate this stuff
for myself. I've always had a fascination with the paranormal. It's
really a metaphor, I think, for a desire to know if there's something
greater than what we see around us. I've read about it extensively,
and investigated quite a lot, particularly in occult areas...magic,
if you will. As a Fortean, I
don't believe or disbelieve. We live in a universe of infinite
possibilities, and anyone who sets themselves up as knowing exactly
how it works deserves to have potshots taken at them - that includes
fundamentalist scientists as well as fundamentalist religious
leaders, of any stripe. I read extensively, books, magazines, the
web, so I'm picking up Fortean material continually along with
everything else. It's all linked so you should try and learn as much
as you can about everything.

Mark's non fiction work 'Testimony' tells the human
side of a supernatural story.

"We live in a universe of infinite possibilities, and
anyone who sets themselves up as knowing exactly how it
works deserves to have potshots taken at them - that
includes fundamentalist scientists as well as fundamentalist
religious leaders.."

As to research, my writing is very influenced by it because of the
degree of believability it imparts. I studied Economic History at
Leeds University where I spent a significant amount of time immersed
in ancient manuscripts, and by association, silverfish. That's where
I developed my interest in history, and particularly pre-history. But
before I became a full-time writer, my professional background was in
journalism, so research - getting the facts right - was pretty much
instilled in me. I wrote for a range of national UK newspapers,
including the Times of London, as a staff reporter before going
freelance and I also worked in television as a journalist for the
BBC. This background may make me sound about 100, but the truth is I
get bored very easily and moved on quickly from one job to another. I
was thinking of having t-shirts printed: 'Mark Chadbourn Journalism
World Tour - April 13 The Times, April 14 - BBC...'

Anyway, with that kind of background you can't get away from
research, so when it came to doing World's
End and the rest of the Age of Misrule trilogy I immersed myself
in it, almost six months per book, visiting ancient sites, reading
books and manuscripts. It was so intense I feel like I'm pretty much
an expert on some of the subjects I covered.

TAC: You've been incredibly busy on the Internet. Can you
discuss your web site, your Ezine, and you participation in message
boards and newsgroups? How long have you been on the Internet? Was it
a hobby before the writing, or did your participation come as a
result of being published? Who pays for the web site?

MC: The net started off as a hobby. I loved the freedom it
represented - being able to find out information, contact people you
would otherwise never have got in touch with - and even though it can
become a drain on time used more productively elsewhere, I still lurk
around messageboards and newsgroups. I've been very lazy with my own
website when it comes to updating the news, but I always post first
chapters of books, and extracts and occasionally short stories.

The Ezine came about as a combination of my journalistic
background and my love of genre. I wanted to stake out an area where
people could get regular news from across the fantasy, SF and horror
genres (very few sites cover all three) as well as providing
criticism and comment from established authors and new names. It
started out as At The World's
End, which got nominated for some awards so we must have been
doing something right, and it has now mutated into The
Alien Online (www.thealienonline.net) - more of the same, only
much, much better. Who pays for it? Me - funded on a shoestring. At
the moment it's an expensive hobby, but if anyone wants to invest we
have a *very* high unique user count!

TAC: Your latest series
shows a wealth of research in matters Celtic and mythic. Did the
research lead you write an epic fantasy set in the modern world (at
least that's how I'd describe the Age of Misrule novels)? What are
your "fantasy roots"? What traditional fantasy writers do you look
to?

MC: If you look at my earlier horror work you'll see I've
regularly been dealing with a collision between what we laughingly
call the 'real' world and other realities. The Age of Misrule was an
opportunity to go the whole hog. It also allowed me to deal with
archetypes and symbolism, which mythology is, and to see if those
symbols still had resonance today. I think writing should shine some
light on the human condition, and the problem I have with some high
fantasy is that it doesn't do this. By setting the series in the
modern world as it slowly metamorphoses into a world of myth, I could
look at the kind of people we are today, our hopes and fears and
beliefs...basically what it means to be human.

There's a bizarre tribalism in the genres today. Some SF readers
won't touch horror. Some horror readers won't countenance fantasy
(and horror is a sub-genre of fantasy). I find that very strange.
Although we have our preferences, surely the benchmark should be
whether a story is good, or not. I've always loved all imaginative
works. With fantasy, I was reading the Weird Tales authors as a kid,
Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, and then Tolkien, of course. Alan Garner
was a very early influence, as was Michael Moorcock. These days I
enjoy M John Harrison and I've recently discovered Robert
Holdstock. But I prefer my fantasy of the dark stripe because I
think that more adequately reflects human nature.

Mark Chadbourn cites Moorcock as an influence on his
writing.

M. John Harrison is an author that Mark is reading
currently. His 'Virconium' was just republished as an SF
Masterwork.

Holdstock is another fantasy author that Chadbourn
enjoys -- but he likes his fantasy dark, just as he writes
it.

TAC: You're currently working a
bit with Adam Roberts, a
writer of Science Fiction and a lecturer on the subject at London
University. How do you feel about the Science Fiction genre?

MC: I enjoy SF a great deal, but with a proviso: there's
been a move towards hard SF recently, which is lacking in the human
element. In Hard SF, characters are often two-dimensional and there's
little examination of humanity at all - a lot of it seems interested
only in Big Machines. It's very popular with physicists, and that's
probably why. The SF I like, has to have at its core a human story,
and that's why I like Adam's stuff. I grew up with Asimov, Heinlein
and Bradbury, where the science was often secondary.

TAC: You have a new novella coming out from PS
Publishing. Can you tell us a bit about it, and the next novel in
the Age of Misrule series? How do you feel about the small publishing
houses like PS Publishing, Subterranean and Cemetery Dance?

MC: The novella is called 'The Fairy Feller's
Master-Stroke', which is the title of a painting in the Tate Gallery
in London, by a Victorian artist called Richard Dadd. He went mad,
killed his father and spent his last days in the infamous Bedlam
asylum drawing pictures of fairies. The novella is about a man, a
childhood prodigy, who becomes obsessed with the painting and
gradually comes to believe it's a doorway to faerie. Whether it is or
not, is a central mystery. The novella skates around the genre
boundaries and has a lot of very personal detail in there.

The Age of Misrule series ended with the third book, Always
Forever, but I've decided to set a few more tales in the world
that remains because the concept - our modern world, but where
ancient gods and Fabulous Beasts operate - is very appealing to me.
The next book is called 'The Devil in Green'. In the face of all
these miraculous beings and events, the Christian church has
collapsed and what's left has retreated to Salisbury Cathedral to try
to build up the religion again. Their first move is to establish a
new Knights Templar, the warrior priesthood, to guard the clerics as
they spread the Word out in this very dangerous world. But before
they get things off the ground, they come under siege from a
terrifying supernatural force...

I am a great supporter of PS, Subterranean,
Cemetery Dance
and the other small publishers and see them as vital to the longevity
of the genre. For a start their benchmark is quality - there's no
crap on their lists - which you can't really say about the mainstream
publishers, where obviously making money for shareholders is the
bottom line. These publishers act like the indie record companies of
the eighties - a reservoir of creative energy and vitality - that
helps point the mainstream publishers in the direction they should be
going. I'm more than happy to see my work appear there as well as in
the mainstream arena, particularly because I can do more experimental
work. And some of them could quite easily become the mainstream
publishers of the future.